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A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984 film)
A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 1984 horror-fantasy film, and the first film in the series. The film stars Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Amanda Wyss, Jsu Garcia (as Nick Corri), Robert Englund, and Johnny Depp in his feature film debut. Set in the fictional Midwestern town of Springwood, Ohio, the plot revolves around several teenagers who are stalked and killed in their dreams by Freddy Krueger. The teenagers are unaware of the cause of this strange phenomenon, but their parents hold a dark secret from long ago. Plot .]] Tina Gray has a nightmare in which she is stalked through a boiler room by a mutilated figure with distinctive razor-sharp knives attached to the fingers on his right hand. Just as he catches her, however, she wakes up screaming, only to discover four razor cuts in her nightdress identical to the cuts in her dream. The next day, she is walking to school and tells her best friend Nancy Thompson about the dream. After having a small argument with her boyfriend Nancy tells her to forget about the dream. That night, Tina, Nancy and her boyfriend Glen Lantz have a sleep-over to make the distraught Tina feel better, as she is still troubled by her nightmare. However, Nancy tells Tina that they both have had the same nightmare of them being chased in a boiler room by a mutilated man with "finger knives". Tina begins to be frightened by the story given by Nancy. The three teenagers hear noises in the backyard of the house. They go outside to investigate with Glen leading the two girls. After taking a few yards away from the backdoor, Tina's rebellious boyfriend, Rod, crashes the party and scares all three of them. After a short conversation between all of them, Rod takes Tina upstairs to have sex in her mother's bedroom while Nancy and Glen stays downstairs to talk for a while before going to their own rooms to sleep. After Rod and Tina have sex, Rod reveals to Tina that he too had the same nightmare as her not too long ago. Shocked by the news, Tina asks Rod for more details about his experience, but Rod tells her 'guys have nightmares too ya know, you ain't got a corner in the market or something'. He then rolls over and they go to sleep. Later, Tina has another nightmare, but instead of a boiler room, she dreams that she is in her mother's room but then hears rocks being thrown at the window. Tina goes outside and into an alley to investigate and at this time the killer reveals himself. After chasing her down the alleyway and to the house, the killer catches up to her and murders her brutally. Rod wakes up to find Tina being cut open by invisible knives, then dragged up the wall and across the ceiling. Rod, being the only other person in the room at the time, flees the house. Nancy and Glenn enter the room to find Rod gone and Tina dead. They are questioned at the police station (by Nancy's father) until Nancy's mother comes to pick her up. The next morning, after not sleeping, Nancy heads off to school, where she is grabbed by Rod and dragged into the bushes. Rod tries to explain what he saw and that it wasn't him that killed Tina. Nancy's dad pops into the bushes and pulls a gun on Rod forcing him to run into the street where he is arrested by other police men. Nancy then has a violent nightmare during class in which she is viciously stalked and attacked by the same terrifying figure who attacked Tina. These nightmares cause her to talk to Rod in jail, who finishes telling her what he saw in Tina's mother's bedroom, and also remarks he had a nightmare involving the fiend with the "knives for fingers". Much to the dismay of her mother Marge, Nancy becomes increasingly convinced that the figure appearing in her dreams is the person who killed Tina. After Nancy has another dream in which she sees the mysterious killer in Rod's jail cell, she and a skeptical Glen rush to the police station late at night to help Rod, only to find that he's been strangled by his own bed sheets. To everyone except Nancy, it appears to be a suicide. Nancy's mother takes her to a Dream Therapy Clinic to ensure she gets some sleep. Once again, she has a horrendous nightmare. This time, a white streak appears in her hair and her arm is badly cut. She finds that she has brought something out from her dream: the killer's battered hat. It arouses concern, but also other feelings in Marge, who is clearly hiding a secret. Eventually, while drunk, Marge reveals to Nancy that the owner of the hat, and the killer, was a man named Fred Krueger, a child murderer who killed at least twenty children over a decade earlier. Furious, vengeful parents burned him alive in his boiler room hideout after he was released from jail on a technicality due to an improperly signed warrant. Now, it appears he is manipulating the dreams of their children to exact his revenge from beyond the grave. Nancy's mother, however, reassures Nancy that Krueger cannot hurt anyone, pulling Krueger's bladed glove from a hiding place in the furnace as proof. Marge installs bars on all the windows and begins to lock the door as "security". Nancy and Glen devise a plan to catch Krueger, but Glen falls asleep that night and Nancy can't get to him because of the locked doors. Without someone to wake him, he is pulled into his bed and regurgitated all over the ceiling as a spew of blood, gore and bone. A emotionally distraught and mentally drained Nancy decides to take Krueger on herself. She sets traps and calls her father. She asks him to be ready when she calls for him with the killer. He tells her he will, clearly just humoring his presumably crazy daughter and tells his deputy to watch the house. Nancy then sets her watch, says a prayer and goes to sleep to find Krurger. She finds him, and they struggle until her alarm goes off and she pulls him out of her dream into the real world. He chases her around her house as she guides him into the booby traps she had set. He then chases her down to the basement where she sets him on fire. Nancy locks him in the basement and finally gets her father, police lieutenant Donald Thompson and the rest of the police to help. After discovering that Krueger has escaped and that fiery footsteps lead upstairs, Nancy and her father witness Krueger smothering Marge with his flaming body, then disappearing to leave her corpse to sink into the bed. After sending her father away, Nancy faces Krueger on her own and succeeds in destroying him by turning her back on him and draining him of all energy. She wishes for all of his victims, including her mother, to be back as she walks out of her mother's bedroom The scene changes to the next morning as Nancy gets in a car with Glen and the rest of her friends, on their way to school. Krueger possesses the car just as she gets in. The car drives away with Nancy screaming for her mother, and Marge being pulled through the door window by Krueger's bladed hand, while three little girls sing his song. Main Cast *John Saxon as Lt. Donald Thompson *Ronee Blakely as Marge Thompson *Heather Langenkamp as Nancy Thompson *Amanda Wyss as Tina Gray *Jsu Garcia as Rod Lane *Johnny Depp as Glen Lantz *Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger Check it from End Title Supporting Cast *Charles Fleischer as Dr. King *Joseph Whipp as Sgt. Parker *Lin Shaye as Teacher *Joe Unger as Sgt. Garcia *Mimi Craven as Nurse *Jack Shea as Minister *Ed Call as Mr. Lantz *Sandy Lipton as Mrs. Lantz *David Andrews as Foreman *Jeff Levine as Coroner *Donna Woodrum as Tina's Mom *Shashawnee Hall as Cop #1 *Carol Pritikin as Cop #2 *Brian Reise as Cop #3 *Ash Adams as Surfer #1 *Don Hannah as Surfer #2 *Leslie Hoffman as Hall Guard *Paul Grenier as Tina's Mom's Boyfriend *John Richardson Peterson as John. Kid In Classroom *Antonia Yannouli as Girl In Nancy's English Class Box Office A Nightmare on Elm Street premiered in the United States on a limited theatrical release on November 9, 1984, opening in 165 cinemas across the country. The film performed moderately well commercially with little advertising — relying mostly on commercial advertisements and word-of-mouth. Grossing US$1,271,000 during its opening weekend, the film was considered an instant commercial success. The film eventually earned a total of $25 million at the American box office. Additionally, A Nightmare on Elm Street was released in Europe, India, Canada and Australia. Reception Since its initial release, critics have praised the film's ability to rupture "the boundaries between the imaginary and real," toying with audience perceptions. Some film historians interpreted this overriding theme as a social subtext, "the struggles of adolescents in American society". Variety said the film was "A highly imaginative horror film that provides the requisite shocks to keep fans of the genre happy". The film has a 95% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is considered by many as one of the best films of 1984. It ranked at #17 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments (2004), a five-hour program that selected cinema's scariest moments. In 2003, Freddy Krueger was named the 40th greatest film villain on American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains. In 2008, Empire ranked A Nightmare on Elm Street 162nd on their list of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. It also was selected by The New York Times as one of The Best 1000 Movies Ever Made. Sequels The 1984's classic Nightmare on Elm Street's hugely success also brought up several high quality sequels, and some of them even received higher reception than the original. In 1985, one year after the first film's release, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge was released, grossed over $29.9 million domistically and received very negative reviews. Two years later, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors was released and grossed more than $44.2 million in North America, and received mixed to positive reviews, some of the critics believes the third film saved the series. After the success of Dream Warriors, the fourth film A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master was released in 1988, and grossed more than $49.9 million at domestic box office, becoming the highest grossing horror film of that year, and was well received with overally mixed to positive reviews from critics, and it is also one of the fan favorites. In 1989, New Line Cinema then released A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, it didn't took very good box office performance, but still grossed $22.2 domistically, and its plot idea becomes much more gothic and darker than before, which was praised by the critics for its film style, and the reception was genarally mixed. In 1991, New Line released Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, decided to end up the whole franchise and makes its film ending into 3D. It grossed $34.5 million but the reception was very negative. Three years later, Wes Craven's New Nightmare was released, it's story is on the real world timeline instead of the original. Though it didn't did well on box office, only grossed $18.3 in North Ameica, it received mixed to positive reviews and becomes a reference of another hugely successful horror series: Scream. New Line released Freddy vs. Jason in 2003, mixed Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger from two horror franchises. It took a box office success of $82.3 million domistically, however, it received mixed reviews. In 2010, a remake film of the original was released, it didn't did very well on box office, the North American performance of the film was $63.5 million, and it received very negative reviews, most of the audiences believes it is one of the worst films of the series. Trivia * The scene where the blood shoots out of Glen's room was actually filmed upside down. ** At the time it was the most fakest blood ever used in one scene. ** When Glen's mother opened the door at the end of that scene you can actually see blood running horizontal and diagonal which was caused by them flipping the room back over. (Mentioned on directors commentary) * Category:Films